Nick Kyrgios calls himself ‘the most entertaining player’ with appeal to Aus Open fans

Nick Kyrgios rallies during training in Australia

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Nick Kyrgios revealed he had asked the umpires in his two Australian Open matches to control the crowd. The current world No 115 had the loud home fans on his side in both rounds, but both Liam Broady and Daniil Medvedev criticised the difficult atmosphere. The 26-year-old said he attempted to stop the crowd when his opponents were serving, but admitted the atmoshphere was good for the sport.

Kyrgios’ Australian Open run came to an end on Thursday, in a four-set defeat to world No 2 Daniil Medvedev.

Despite playing his first tournament in four months fresh off the back of a positive Covid test, the Aussie stayed with the US Open champion for three hours before Medvedev came through 7-6(1) 6-4 4-6 6-2.

He was pushed on by a lively night session crowd, playing in the primetime slot on Rod Laver Arena.

Much like his first match, cries of Cristiano Ronaldo’s trademark ‘Suii’ celebration rang out through the stands between points, and Medvedev later slammed the crowd for “booing” between his first and second serve.

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“I came to win this match and I am happy that I managed to do it. That’s the only choice when you are booed between first and second serves,” he told Jim Courier during his on-court interview, as the retired pro then explained the real meaning of the sound.

British qualifier Liam Broady, who lost to Kyrgios in straight sets in the opening-round, also opened up on how difficult it was to be up against the crowd in his match on Tuesday.

Speaking after his first-ever main draw appearance at the Australian Open, he said: “Everyone was telling me: ‘Oh you’ll really enjoy it. It’s going to be amazing’. But I thought it was absolutely awful.

But Kyrgios has now spoken out, admitting he agreed that the atmosphere would be tough for his opponents and asked the chair umpire in both matches to do something about it.

“I told the umpire, I also said that in my match against Broady that obviously the media didn’t pick up, but I said, you know, you should tell the crowd not to scream out before, whether it’s me — I don’t really care honestly too much if it’s my serve,” he said, speaking after his loss to Medvedev.

“Obviously big points, no. But if it’s like 40-Love, 1-up, I told the umpire, Tell the crowd to quiet down. My opponent might not like that.”

The former world No 13 also made a dig at the umpire in his match against the Russian, saying his job wasn’t to “be the star”.

He continued: “I think it’s actually the umpire’s job to control the crowd rather than try to be the star, because no one came to watch the umpire play tennis. That’s his job to control the crowd and monitor it.

“Like, a bit of common sense at times, giving someone a time violation at Love-40 down is probably not controlling the crowd. There are other things you could be doing in monitoring.”

While Kyrgios acknowledged that some of the crowd’s noise was tough on his opponents, he said the atmosphere from his matches needed to be celebrated and welcomed in order to keep tennis alive and current.

“I thought the atmosphere was awesome. I thought the crowd was — like, that’s what sport is,” he admitted.

“You’ve got, like, you know, the most entertaining player playing in his home slam on Rod Laver. You’d expect the crowd to be like that.

“I can understand it’s a gentleman’s game, but it’s about time that people embraced some sort of different energy in this sport otherwise it will die out. It’s just that simple.”

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